NEW DELHI: Annoyed at the slow pace with which the Registrar General's office is enrolling beneficiaries for Aadhar, the politically active states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand have plied pressure on the Prime Minister's Office to speed up the process for the direct benefit transfer scheme.

Acting on the complaint, the Prime Minister's Office has recently written to the Registrar General of India to speed up the process of enrolment for Aadhaar in these states. Last month, a meeting convened by Pulok Chatterji, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, asked the office of the Registrar General to complete the process of enrolment in 14 districts across the four states by the end of May.

DBT is an anti-poverty programme that transfers subsidies directly to the people living below poverty line. The primary aim is to bring transparency and terminate pilferage from distribution of funds sponsored by the central government. "The idea is to provide Aadhaar cards to 80 per cent of the population in each district so that people are eligible for subsidies through the direct benefit transfer scheme," a senior official in the Office of the Registrar General, told ET.

The pan-India enrolment for Aadhaar was mandated partly to UIDAI and partly to the Office of the Registrar General of India. The latter was tasked with the job in 16 states and two union territories. While UIDAI began the process of enrolment in 2010 in the states earmarked to it, the registrar general took up the job in Uttar Pradesh in January and in Bihar in February. Before that in Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, there was hardly any progress due to unavailability of list of beneficiaries. That the Registrar General's pace has been slow can be gauged by the fact that out of over 32 crore Aadhaar cards issued so far, enrolment for only six crore cards have been provided by the registrar general while enrolment for just another two crore is in the pipeline.

Six districts are in Uttar Pradesh, three each in Bihar and Uttarakhand and two in Chhattisgarh. "Given the short time to complete the task, we have chosen sparsely populated and peaceful districts to ensure we deliver on the mandate given to us from the PMO," the official added. Government plans to roll out the second phase of the direct benefit transfer in the 78 identified districts from July 1. The first phase was launched in 43 districts in January this year.